A Sharpness On The Neck (Saberhagen's Dracula Book 9)

by Fred Saberhagen

There is a peculiarity of vampire combat that I have seldom heard remarked upon: that one never gasps or pants with exertion. Physical weariness ensues at last, as it must in all living things, but not because of lack of oxygen. One must resort to other means to gauge the weariness of one’s opponent, or ally. Even when one is mortally wounded, the voice ordinarily remains full and well-controlled. Only emotion, and not the need to gulp for air, may cause it to break chaotically.

  When the broken fore-end of my captured wooden spear was broken once again, this time into uselessness, I fought on with my bare hands and, toward the bitter end, with a succession of small logs or fallen branches. Stones, born of the ancient earth but as lifeless as brass or steel, tended to be no more effective than those refined metals.

  At this point, with only three of my original five assailants still on their feet, the breather turned tail and ran away in terror. Evidently the thought of what Radu might do to him was not enough to make him face me any longer.

  One might, in emulation of Samson of the Old Testament, use an animal skull or one of the long bones as an effective weapon. On occasion I have found the skulls of horned cattle to be quite formidable tools of combat against my own kind, but unhappily none were within reach. My own talons and fangs tended to be effective.

  My opponents on that day were neither the least nor the most skillful or brave that I had ever faced. The mere fact that their entire band had not yet broken and fled testified to their basic nerve and competence. They endeavored to get me between them, but I foiled that tactic by getting my back against a tree.

  In a brief pause, before the next stage of our fight began, my nosferatu enemies bragged to me of Radu’s cleverness and power, and that they were sure they had chosen the right side in our prolonged conflict. They taunted me with the damage they had already done to me, but I could hear the hollowness of fear in everything they said.

  The man I had almost killed in the old chapel boasted to me that he personally had tracked down the small peasant girl after all.

  The words came out quite clearly: “She was a tasty morsel.” And he licked his lips.

  My reply was also enunciated with precision: “Molesting the child was a serious mistake. I made it clear to you that she was under my protection.”

  Having issued that indictment, as it were, I paused, the better to concentrate on the next exchange of blows and thrusts. One as experienced in combat as I was could sense a difference in the air. My confidence that I would survive this encounter was growing fast, and that of my opponents waning with reciprocal speed. “But you have committed an even greater error just now, in telling me what you had done.”

  I was far from convinced of my opponent’s truthfulness in making such a boast—but whether I believed it or not made no difference in my determination to finish the speaker off.

  In the end I was forced to believe him, for he produced convincing evidence, in the form of the very talisman I had given to the child—and his trembling hand now held it out to me in a dying, taunting gesture. I snatched it away from him before he could fling it out of reach.

  And then, having disposed of his last ally, in my rage I did the very worst that I knew how, in the very limited span of time available, to the pain-nerves in his guilty hand. His shrieks were deafening, but they soon ceased.

  So, it was not by means of magic that he had tracked her down. How he had done so I never learned. But alas, Radu and others might have known the child’s village, even her house, before they kidnapped her.

  * * *

  At least I had regained the talisman, and I hastened to hang it around my neck. Now Radu and whatever force he might raise next would have to pursue their hunt for me by non-magical means alone—which restriction, I thought, would probably not deprive them of success.

  Verily I would have been gasping at that moment, were my body at all dependent upon air. Swaying, I looked about me at death and destruction. The only one of my foes who was still alive was he who had earlier taken to his heels, and was by now a mile away.

  Radu’s people had achieved—at considerable cost to themselves—at least one minor victory, freezing me in man-form all through the remainder of the night. Then when I came to consider the matter, I thought that they might have won much more than that; truly it began to seem to me then that my wounds were likely to prove mortal.

  * * * * * *

  My first instinct for survival after the fight, as I clutched at a tree branch for support, was to seek sanctuary by changing form; but I realized in time that my chance of getting through a day in mist-form would be zero instead of only vanishingly small. I could recall how more than one old colleague of mine had perished, changing into mist-form when seriously hurt, and being blown to nothingness by a mere passing breeze.

  I thought that in wolf-form I was not likely to fare much better. A wounded man might obtain help at a farmhouse, might find some place indoors to shelter from the sun. A wounded bat or wolf would certainly not. Aerial flight, and also the speed of a four-legged run, were going to be denied him, at least until he had had some chance to rest and heal.

  Looking at the red ruin around me, I scorned to refresh myself with the blood of any of my breathing attackers. One reason was that doing so might have made it easier for my enemies’ magic to follow my trail. Another and perhaps stronger reason was that my pride had soared with the heat of combat, and I assured myself that I was not that hungry.

  Remembering the man who had chosen to run away, I told myself that even in my wounded condition I would have had a good chance of running the coward down. But the effort would surely have completed my own exhaustion, and I thought there was nothing of much importance to be learned from him—from the beginning I had felt no doubt as to who had put the attackers on my trail—so I chose rather to concentrate instead upon my own survival.

  It was fortunate that I did so.

  I experienced a well-earned satisfaction at having survived Radu’s initial attack. More than that, I congratulated myself upon having won the first skirmish, diminishing the numbers in the force that was now arrayed against me. Still, as I surveyed my prospects for survival with fearless—no, not courageous, that is something else—realism, I thought that they were not good.

  I meditated—quite uselessly, of course—upon the fact that I might have started to recruit an army, or at least a posse, of my own, once I knew that Radu was again above the ground. Perhaps, I thought, I should have done.

  In whatever time and place a nosferatu lives, the willing help of at least one intelligent and understanding breather can be of tremendous benefit. I foresaw that I would seek such aid from someone soon—if I lived long enough. I was not without friends, in France or elsewhere. But calling for help was usually the last alternative I considered when in trouble. Earlier I had vaguely reassured myself with the thought that I had friends—but it was my own fault now that they were none of them on hand.

  Swaying with weakness, and temporarily prohibited by my injuries from changing shape, I made what plans I could.

  My appearance at this time must have been truly ghastly. Never had I less regretted my inability to use a mirror. I had a great lump on my forehead, not to mention a torn flap of skin hanging over one eye. With trembling hand I held the flap in place, until it began, very delicately and tentatively, to heal there.

  Listening, sniffing the breeze, even though I was denied the keener senses of the wolf, I thought I detected certain evidence that more of my enemies, though still miles distant, were gathering, swarming, on my trail.

  Of course it would have been mad, suicidal, for me to go back to sleep in the same earth. If one band of my enemies had found it, the others could do so also. And now the whole area around was trampled, strewn with the debris of combat, flesh and blood, bits of wood and cloth and bone and metal.

  * * *

  Our struggle had been a prolonged one, and not much of the night was left. I had no choice but to retreat at once, and in man-form—ne
ver mind that I was still oozing, dripping blood, leaving a trail that would be child’s play to follow. I would have to cover as much ground as I could before the dawn, then take whatever chance Fate offered. I tried to bind up my most heavily dripping wound, where someone’s spear had gone skewering deep into my side, but soon I abandoned the attempt as hopeless. One arm was almost useless, and my usable hand was shaking uncontrollably.

  I could certainly be thankful now, with my berserker combat frenzy ebbing, that I had not been foolish enough to attempt a pursuit of my surviving attacker.

  Similarly I had to abandon the idea of improvising some kind of sunshade to protect my head and face when dawn, overtook me, as it seemed it inevitably must. My eyes in particular would be at risk, but there was nothing to be done about that now.

  Slowly I called up a mental map of the entire province, trying to decide which was my nearest earth, which the least likely for the enemy to have discovered.

  The mental image of the map as it took shape was scarcely reassuring. There was only one real possibility of survival, a sanctuary in the cellar of an antique farmhouse, which unfortunately lay more than a few miles from my present location. To reach it before dawn in my present condition would to say the least present a considerable challenge.

  Doggedly I let go my hold upon the branch and began to walk; and only as I did so, provoking in myself gray tendencies to faint, did I begin seriously to doubt whether I would make it as far as my sanctuary.

  Feeling as clumsy and vulnerable as any breather, I trudged on. I was possessed of one tiny advantage, in that I was heading west, the dawn at my back and still perhaps two hours behind me.

  * * *

  Fortunately the sense of being still pursued grew no stronger, no more immediate. I knew in my bones that I was too weak to stand and fight again, even if next time I should not be so badly outnumbered. The slow draining of blood and vitality inexorably took its toll. A single determined breather with a wooden club or spear could probably have finished me when I began to flee the dawn. But of course I would make an effort, if it came to that.

  More than once on that terrible trek I heard a howl in the distance, the sound carrying from miles away, and wondered if my enemies were using hounds to hunt me down. Ordinarily I might have been able to turn the hunters’ own dogs against them, even at a distance.

  I had managed to slow my blood loss to a trickle, then to stop it almost completely. Alas, that “almost” was likely to prove fatal. My increasing weakness was binding all my powers ever more closely to me, diminishing their range.

  Dragging myself from the support of one tree or fence-post to the next, I at one point considered trying to rest in some cave where a group of vagrants had taken shelter. But I quickly rejected the idea. If I could enter the cave without an invitation, the more dangerous of my pursuers would be able to do the same.

  Hunted through the darkness before dawn, aware to the minute, almost to the second, of the approaching sunrise that was almost certain to prove fatal, I considered taking shelter in someone’s mausoleum. But again I would be helpless if any of Radu’s people overtook me there.

  * * *

  When in ordinary health, I might easily enough have passed a day and night and a second day above ground, given reasonable shelter from direct sun. But in my wounded condition, the healing power of my native earth had become a grim necessity. At last, with dawn relentlessly about to break and only one possibility of help within a hundred miles, I limped, wounded and bleeding, toward the dwelling which, cold calculation informed me, represented my last chance.

  It would not have surprised me in the least to find this last hope denied me, my earth defiled, or rendered useless by being kept under watch.

  The last quarter of a mile took me almost half an hour to cover.

  It would not have surprised me at all to discover, in any of these last breathless minutes before sunrise, Radu’s smiling face looming out of the early morning mists ahead. My brother might have somehow learned all my secret sanctuaries. Certainly Radu would want to be in at my death if he possibly could, would give almost anything for the chance to observe my pangs of dissolution, and taunt me on my way. Perhaps at the end he would have dragged me into a tree’s shade so that the killing power of sunlight should not have its way with me too swiftly. But no Radu appeared. The fugitive’s last chance was not yet quite foreclosed.

  And now the little farmhouse on its hill had come in sight. But there had been an ominous change—an enlargement of fairly recent vintage—in the building since I had seen it last.

  * * *

  Long ago indeed, in fact as far back as the early seventeenth century, I had foresightedly established, in the building which had then occupied this ground, one of a small number of emergency spare earths. But now very little of that original old stone structure still remained, and what was left of it had been enlarged upon, incorporated into what was now a much larger manor. Some might have called it a chateau.

  Sometime during the decades since my last visit, a new generation of breathers had made the place their own and taken up their residence inside. One or two of them at least were in there now. If I listened I could hear their voices. They were a man and woman talking freely to each other, conversing in good humor, if not necessarily in the way of lovers; I could hear their careless laughter, and their four breathing lungs.

  From my throat there issued, without any conscious intention on my part, a horrible growling, too low a sound for any breather at the distance of the manor house to have detected it.

  There was no way that the Prince of Wallachia was going to be able to force his way into that or any other house against the will of those who sheltered there. No way today to claim his shelter unmolested. Not that my honor, in any case, would have allowed me to take on the role of thief and brigand, stealing from the innocent.

  From somewhere there came back to me the image of small Marie, the sound and smell of the child’s exhaustion and her terror. Now it was Prince Dracula who had sunk into impotence. If Marie had been at hand, he would have tried to lean his weight on her. Feeling as feeble as any breathing babe, he was going to have to ask for help.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Philip Radcliffe stood on the landing of a curved, stone stair inside the centuries-old farmhouse, close beside the embrasure of a window pierced through the thick stone wall. He was at that moment gripping an antique candleholder in his right hand, holding it close beside the wall, trying to get a good look at the stone surface near the window. The wall at that point was practically featureless, but the young man was frowning lightly, squinting his eyes at the memory of something there.

  Meanwhile his free hand was resting in a brotherly fashion on the shoulder of the young woman who stood beside him. She had been gazing out the window, and now spoke, breaking a brief silence. “It’s almost morning.”

  Radcliffe and his fair companion had spent part of the preceding evening strolling through the house with lamps and candles, studying certain portraits of his ancestors, in his mother’s family, which were still hanging on the walls. Now and again, as here, they discovered only empty places where those remembered pictures had once hung.

  Not that tracing a family tree had been their chief concern. “It seems we’ve talked the night away.” Radcliffe’s French was lightly accented, but almost good enough to allow him to pass as a native of this province.

  “With eighteen years to catch up on, it’s no wonder we’ve a lot to say to each other.”

  Last night no one had bothered to close any shutters above the ground floor, and now all the windows were open to welcome in the burgeoning light of dawn. The two young people picked up their wineglasses from the broad stone windowsill, touched them together, and once more sipped the excellent wine, from a cellar even older than the house itself. From this window they enjoyed a good view of the impending sunrise, brushing now with light the highest trees of a distant hilltop. The surrounding country showed a wild
character, its narrow, fertile valleys cut apart by wooded hills and ridges. This was a region mostly of small isolated farms, and, as Radcliffe remembered, much ranged by hunters. No one around here was likely to be much surprised by the sound of dogs baying on a trail.

  An acquaintance of the Philip Radcliffe who would be kidnapped in 1996 would have noted a definite physical resemblance between him and this man who shared his name and was his ancestor. But the hair of this earlier Radcliffe was darker, almost black, and he was not as tall as his descendant. Also, the appearance of the Philip Radcliffe who would never see an electric light was made more interesting by a facial scar, the relic of a tavern brawl during his student days in Philadelphia. And by light smallpox scarring.

  Philip frowned, raising his candle again, letting his eyes rove up and down the curve of stone wall that embraced the stair. He was sure he could remember an assortment of old ancestral portraits on this wall. He mentioned the thought to Melanie, and she agreed.

  “And just here…” He had turned away from the window, and his two hands were making parallel gestures at the blank space. “There hung a picture of an old man … my mother’s grandfather? I seem to remember her telling me that.”

  Melanie Remain, daughter of the local physician, a young woman of striking features, rough hands, greenish eyes, in turn raised her glass to Philip. “But you couldn’t have been more than six years old—seven at the most; I think I was only six when your mother took you to America. Oh, how I cried!”

  Melanie’s dress was politically correct for these revolutionary times, in that it was several years out of date in styling, worn and fraying at the hem. But that correctness was strictly an accident. She certainly had not the look or manner or speech of a peasant, or of one of the urban sans-culotte women. But whatever her social status under the old regime or the new, her roughened hands showed that she had been no idle lady.